Registan.net

Some time ago, I discussed an article Philip Smucker wrote about the presence of Al Qaeda along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. I was mostly skeptical of this section in particular:
Interviews with US military commanders and American radio intercepts of Arab and Chechen fighters as well as confirmed captures or kills of foreign fighters inside […]

Well, Carlotta Gall has actually said it all in the lede:
The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population.
I’m glad she’s back.

Joshua Foust (me!), February 27, 2007:
Yet even after years of what the IMF calls “building capacity,” Kabul cannot manage its resources effectively. Trying to unravel the financial mess, the World Bank in late 2005 drafted a report on Afghanistan’s public finances. It contains some sobering statistics: domestic revenues are only 5% of GDP, the fiscal […]

Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s coverage of the new USMC Offensive into Helmand Province takes great pains to emphasize that the Marines are going to focus not on going out and killing Taliban, but on creating space for governance in the area. At a high level, it makes a lot of sense, even if I think they might […]

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post:
Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday morning, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military’s new counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan…
Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build […]

Sanjar—a blog I have followed closely for years—claims IRD, a USAID contractor with several hundred million dollars of contracts in Afghanistan, has fired him for asking why Afghan employees are treated differently than expatriate employees at their offices in Kabul. I really cannot excerpt his post, but if true this is a pretty terrible thing […]

Foreign Policy strikes again, this time with an essay written by some DOD guy named Patrick Devenny who basically summarizes a memoir he found on Google Books.
As American troops in Afghanistan seek to rebuild a flagging campaign, they might do well to read up on the lessons of another troubled Afghan project, the Anglo-Afghan Wars […]